Our Cultural Commons

This is a weekly series of articles curated by Voluntary Arts and authored by cultural thinkers and doers. The series will be published between November 2017 and February 2018. It is being shaped in response to the emerging practice of cultural commoning and as a way of articulating ideas that have arisen in conversations about Our Cultural Commons over the past two years across the UK and Republic of Ireland.

Our intention is that the series will help make visible the cultural commons in action and will encourage new approaches to sustaining creative cultural activity in local places. And we hope that the articles and the conversation they stimulate will contribute to the forming of ever more enabling cultural policy.

Presentations from a series of conversational seminars exploring cultural participation, democracy and the economy through the lens of the commoning and cooperative movements. The series was hosted by Voluntary Arts Ireland as part of the Imagine: Belfast Festival of Ideas and Politics 2018Read more

Robin Simpson, Chief Executive of Voluntary Arts, describes how in this changing world, that for many of us feels deeply unsettling, we may find ways of responding constructively in new approaches which draw on old traditions.Read more